August 20, 2007

The Sweetness and the Heartbreak, Part Two

It has been 365 days since one’s love life fell apart and another’s appeared to be ascendant.
Now with the terrestial revolution complete, their roles are reversed.
In the wake of The Bitter and Bloody End, D. has mourned, and has moved
on. He has met a woman who fills the empty spots left by The Ex in new
and warming ways. Some days he is filled with deep contentment, and
other days, he feels panicked about the prospect of giving his heart
away again.

"There are no guarantees," I tell him.

--------------------

And G., oh my darling, beloved and young G. – she tells me that she
is through with young men except for Baby Puggle (she calls him her
“boyfriend”). B., like all Prince Charmings under the age of 30, is
still in what my Hubby refers to as a “post adolescent hook up
mentality.” In short, he has proven to be a callow, feckless and
peripatetic lover.

They danced around each other for a year, but all along, the effort
to bridge the long distance relationship thing was made on G.'s side
with B. running hot and cold and hot and cold. He begged her to come
see him and when she did -- he fell flat on his face and G. wondered if
it was worth pursuing. They decided that friendship was the path to
take because of the distance thing -- but then he wooed her again and
won her affection -- not her heart because she's too careful with that
instrument to hand it out willy nilly -- but there was a romance, yes
indeed there was -- there were late night phone calls urgent with
discovery; and then there was the drunken phone call one night when B.
dropped the "LOVE" bomb and G. was frozen and changed the subject. She
sent me a text message later to ask, "He wouldn't say that without
meaning it would he?"

--------------------

"He was drunk off his ass," says Hubby later when I tell him.

I murmur, "Drunk dialing is fun."

Hubby is viciously protective of G., and says, "At best, he's drunk,
stupid and bored because he's trapped in a place where there's nothing
to do. He needs to be tested in an environment where there are
distractions -- things he'd normally do when she's not with him.
Frankly the two times he's had the opportunity, he failed pretty
spectacularly. At worst, he's looking for a hook up. He's a guy."

I recoil, equally as protective of our G. "I'd hate to think that he's that Machiavellian -- "

"Machiavelli was a guy," Hubby reminds me.

"Oh good point."

--------------------

D. says that he feels much braver standing in a battle zone confronting bullets and grenades than
contemplating the state of his heart. It makes me think of something I
once told a friend: "A man is never as brave again as when he says, 'I
love you," (and means it) for the first time."

My sister said this to
me: "If men wear armor, it's around their hearts."

"I'm thinking too much, aren't I?" asks D. "I'm about to screw up
something potentially great because I just can't let it be, aren't I?"

Ah D. I love that
he's not willing to give up on love even though his heart was so badly
broken.

________________________

This is how G. finds out: the dumbass has a myspace page and it
features pictures of his girlfriend and notes that he is in a
relationship. G. is utterly and completely appalled.

"Oh my fucking .... " is the IM I get at midnight with the URL to his myspace page.

And she's horrified because B. insisted all along that he is quite
single, and while they weren't dating and nothing untoward transpired
-- they've visited each other quite recently and spent weekends in each
other's company -- and G. is enraged to have been made the other woman
unwittingly and most definitely -- unwillingly.

She sends him one simple text message. "You are an idiot."

At six am the next morning, her phone explodes in a flurry of text
messages and repeated phone calls. B. knows he's been caught. She
answers with this comment: "You have five minutes. Then I'm going
back to sleep. Because it's six in the morning."

He stumbles and stutters and frets and goes about trying to explain
himself. And G. is unsympathetic. "We are friends, or were," she
says. "Honesty matters a lot to me. So -- were you dating her when
you came to see me two weekends ago?"

Silence on the other end. More stumbling and stuttering. Ten
minutes into this short-bus-a-thon, she finally says, "When you can
figure out how to tell the truth, call me back. Until then, don't
bother."

_________________________

D. asks me how you know.

"You don't," I tell him. "It's a leap of faith. What you have now
may not be what you have in the future. Are you prepared for that?"

---------------------

“G,” I tell her, “he is too green now to know what he’s done, but
give him a pass for peurility because he's young and incredibly
stupid. But some day, when this statement means something to him:
‘Commitment is something men mature into because their future happiness
depends upon it,’ he’ll be nothing but a distant memory in your life,
and you’ll be an everlasting regret in his.”

That line about commitment – I am quoting Sting (yes, Sting), and I have never found a phrase more perspicacious.

G. sighs, then says with that spark I love so much in her, “And then when he finishes looking up the words in a dictionary…."

She mutters darkly that she's finished with boys.

"As well you should be," I tell her.

Endings are so strangled with black feelings.

_________________________

"I really think I could fall in love with her," D. says with heartfelt emotion.